Leadership magazine May/June 2015 V 44 No 5 | Page 38

Practical ways schools can partner with local emergency responders
Continued from page 15

the best resource to work with to make sure
that your school is properly prepared while
following the communication strategies that
ICS employs. Partnering with your local fire
service agency and finding out who can
work with your school district is an excellent

way to get professional feedback and guidance for your safety program.

2. Application!
Once you have your safety program in
place and ICS is adhered to, then you can
practice with your staff and eventually your

entire school population. You can run your
school fire drills, earthquake drills and
“shooter on campus” drills utilizing the Incident Command System. Contact the local
fire department to come out and evaluate
how your drills are conducted. Have them
listen to your ICS communications. They
can also check to make sure your triage area
is in a good location and your command
post is in an advantageous location. They
may even provide you with feedback on
evacuation routes that are better suited for
your campus than what you may be using
right now. Again, use their expertise to help
you better protect yourselves and your children on campus.

3. Evaluation!
You’ve done all of your prep, you’ve practiced your drills many times, and now it’s
time to get some honest feedback on how
you have protected your staff, kids and campus. Once again, get professional feedback
from emergency responders.
Firefighters use a term called “tailboard
sessions.” This is essentially a defusing process, and it is an excellent way to make your
system better and stronger, immediately
after a drill or actual emergency.
Once you have completed your drill, ask
the emergency responders to stick around
and provide insight on how you did and how
you can improve. There are two advantages
to this. Because of their training, emergency
responders may see things that you might not
have thought of. Also, because emergency
responders are not at your school site day in
and day out, they have “fresh eyes” that are
watching how you conduct your trainings.

Planning saves lives
Now it’s up to you! Have a plan, apply
your plan, evaluate your plan, and most importantly, partner with emergency responders to effectively complete your plan. The
plans you develop today may save you and
your kids tomorrow. n

Joe Viramontez is a retired fire captain,
Santa Clara County.
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